A Work Day

24 May 2005

This past weekend my sister and I went to our parents' recitals - uh, shows. My Dad is an avid Barbershop singer (for about 38 years now) and my Mom is a tap dancer. Dad's placed as high as 13th in international quartet competitions and Mom's danced on the big star in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. On Sunday they did a joint show, so I got to see both of them perform in one outing. Most near 40 year olds are having Mom and Dad come watch their kids (we do that too), not going to watch their parents.

But that's not the subject of this post. Heading to Toledo, I picked up my sister at a church gathering. I thought that her church marrieds group was having a retreat of some kind. Instead they were having a work day.

One of the group members lives in the country north of Columbus near Delaware OH. Not much around them, but the property next door is an older house that may have been an old farm house. There's an elderly woman, in her late 70's, living there alone. She's evidently been pretty quiet, keeping to herself.

This past winter as this couple was leaving their home, they noticed something odd at the house. I don't remember what, but something made them stop and check the woman's home. They found her, without a coat in sub-freezing temps, on her porch barefoot. She had evidently gone out to get the mail or newspaper and locked the door. She dropped her keys along the porch and couldn't retrieve them. She had taken her shoes off in her confusion thinking it might give her a better grip on the ice. Paramedics were called and when they arrived they were not able to get a body temperature to register on her. She spent some time in the hospital, but has recovered fine.

Since then, she's warmed up to them a bit, and they to her. I suppose a near death experience will do that. They noticed that her property needed some attention, peeling paint, overgrown trees and flower beds, etc. So this couple arranged for their Bible study group to come up for a Saturday work party. They scraped and repainted, trimmed trees, cleared beds and planted flowers. The old woman, I guess, looked on at all these young folks (mostly in their mid 30's) scurrying around her usually quiet property.

I picked up my sister before they were quite done, so I don't know how she felt or what she said at the end. No matter, I guess, they were just doing as Jesus did and I know that He was thankful they cared.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.